Projecting

I have far, far too many projects in my life. Whether work or personal, my life is just crowded with them. But it is what it is and it is part of who I am.

I’ve got projects to clean, tidy, neaten, cook, plant, grow, trim, simplify, exercise, relax more, and many more. You can see how they can cause problems, especially when they’re in direct conflict with each other.

But I’ve added one to the pile–or at least moved it back to the top. Dad and Jenni have really been needling me to write more–stories, that is, not just the tripe you find here nearly every day. And the thing is, I really want to do this. I just need to stop making excuses, make the room in my life, and do it.

So for the last week or so, I’ve been going through the pile of half-written, barely-written, outlined, conceptualized, and character described stories I have on the various flash drives I carry with me every day. Some are ideas I’ve had for a very long time (one story was born in my freshman year of college and has morphed into something almost completely different, except that three of the characters remain the same), and some have been born only lately.

The fact of the matter is that I just need to find a story idea I like, buckle down, and just start writing and commit to it and don’t stop until the story is done. Editing, massaging, and selling the project can come later. I’ve got to get something complete out of my head.

So I started combining a couple of ideas that I’d really liked, because deep down, I really want to write funny, tongue-in-cheek, and really oddball stories. But everything that I think is odd comes out serious and strange, which would be fine, but it doesn’t have the voice I want. And stories that start out trying to be funny come out just sarcastic, and that isn’t fun at all. So if I can combine the odd with the funny, then I think I might have something. Especially if I write with character types that lie outside of my comfort zone.

Armed with the new, combined idea, I’ve been doing some research on these characters, because I want them to be mostly true to their type in stories, but I want them to be the weirdos that everyone in that group would shun or avoid. Combine it with a dash of personal experience that most of the world is lacking, and I feel like I’ve got something here.

No, I haven’t started writing yet. I’m still researching and trying to have an outline that at least has a solid, plausible, achieveable beginning, middle and end, so I have some clear path to follow, because too often I just lose momentum because I can’t work through a problem. That’s where I just need to keep writing.

I’ll share some of the experience later, but not the writing. Not here or now. That may come later.